SIXTY-FIVE
“What the hell?” Jack said.
She looked out the back window to see three men approach the man on the ground. They looked all around, then bent down to go through the dead man’s pockets.
“It was a lookout,” Angela told him. “We’re close.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, his name was Jesus, one of the lookouts they have posted at street level.” Angela pointed. “Up there. See that building with the dark, octagonal, three-story tower at the corner? Turn left there.”
Jack turned the corner. The street became more than a street. It had been used by commercial trucks to load and unload at the buildings rising up at the edge of narrow sidewalks. Some of the buildings had roll-up metal doors with small loading docks. Rusted metal railings kept people from falling in the loading pits. Wooden pallets lay on some of the docks. In other places pallets were leaned up against corners of buildings.
Chain-link fences with barbed wire on top spanned the gaps between some of the buildings. Those canyons between vertical walls were filled with years of accumulated trash.
All the buildings, docks, railings, roll-up doors—everything—had been hit by scribble monkeys. Buildings seemed to melt together in endless gang graffiti, all the tags proclaiming affiliation and territory, or boasting threats.
The tall building on the left at the far corner of the block was different from the others all around it. It was made up of a gridwork of cement columns and beams, with brick filling in the centers and forming the main part of the walls. The brick squares had windows in long rows up high that looked to be for light and ventilation, not for a view. Higher up, the building’s walls were set back, and were all brick as it rose a number of stories more.
A vertical sign attached at the corner of the building said STILTON. The letters had once been filled with rows of lightbulbs, now all missing. She didn’t see that sign in Cassiel’s memories, but she saw the rest of the building. He had gone in and out from a loading dock in an alley of sorts.
“Go left at the end of the block,” she said.
Jack took the left at the corner with the Stilton sign and then took the next one when she told him to.
“What are we doing?” he asked. “We’re starting to drive around in circles.”
“The bomb is in the Stilton Building,” she said.
Jack craned his neck to look back over his left shoulder. “Damn.”
She had him turn the car around and drive around the block again, checking for lookouts and to be on the same side of the street for a better view of the building and for her to get a better shot if she needed one.
“Did you notice where the lookouts are?” she asked.
“Yes, at that blind alley with a loading dock at the back end.”
“Right.” Angela let out a deep breath. “Well, this is it.”
He shot her a sidelong glance. “This had damn well better work,” he muttered. “From here a nuke would take out the government.”
She nodded absently, thinking instead about the enormity of what was about to happen, the magnitude of everything resting on her shoulders. It seemed insane, but at the same time she knew she was right that this was the only sane course of action that could stop it from happening.
As they went around the building again, a DC police car drove slowly past, both black cops looking everything over for any sign of trouble. They had no idea that the Stilton Building they were passing was filled with trouble. The cop car drove on down the street and eventually turned a corner in the distance.
Just before they came around the corner again, before the street that would take them past that blind alley with the loading bay, Angela gestured to the side. “Okay, park back here. Back before the corner. I don’t want them to see us drive by again or it will alert them.”
“Are those two men standing beside the alley men you recognize from Cassiel’s memory?” he asked as he pulled to the curb and leaned forward to try to look out past her.
“Yes,” she said as she pushed him back in his seat before she popped open her door. “Silvino and Ronaldo. Back up a little so they can’t see your car.” When he did, she said, “Okay, wait here.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Jack asked.
“I need to take out the lookouts. When I come back out of that loading alley, I’ll signal, so be looking for me, then you can come in the back entrance with me. Do you have all your magazines on you?”
“Yes. What do you mean you’re going to take out the lookouts?”
Angela didn’t answer as she got out and shut the car door.
All four of her pockets were loaded with five or six magazines each. That was far more than she expected to need, but as her grandfather always told her, you can never have too much ammo. At times it felt like he was with her, reminding her of a hundred little details.
Leaving the car waiting back around the corner, she strutted down the street to where the two men were leaning against a wall beside what at first glance looked like an alley. Rather than an alley, though, it was a short dead end, deep enough for a large truck to park and unload at an elevated dock at the rear. The dock had wooden stairs to the left.
She recognized the two men standing watch beside the alley—Silvino and Ronaldo—because Cassiel had spent a good deal of time with Rafael and all his men. She recognized them the same as he would have. None of the men really liked Cassiel—he was an outsider.
For his part, Cassiel didn’t respect or care about any of them, either. He had only been with them until a time came when he could make an escape and again be on his own.
Once the bomb went off and the entire team was dead, their minders back in Iran would think he had died along with them. Having escaped death twice, he would then be free to hunt again. But the third time had been the charm. He died hunting Angela.
When she walked past the pair, they grinned, then pursed their lips to make kissing sounds as they grabbed their crotches. Angela stopped and smiled at them.
“You called?”
“Maybe,” Silvino said.
“Well, do you want something or not? I ain’t got all day, ya know.”
“Maybe you could suck my cock?” Silvino asked with a grin.
She stepped close and ran a finger along his collar.
“Maybe.”
“How much?”
“Ten. With a condom. Twenty without.”
“Is good for me. Twenty dollars.” He pointed a thumb back over his shoulder. “We go back there.”
Ronaldo leered down at her legs, his gaze coming to a stop on her crotch. “How much for fuck?”
“Forty. But I’m running a special today. Two for sixty.”
Silvino whispered something to his buddy.
Ronaldo looked somewhat annoyed. “This is my last chance for coño,” he answered back. “If you don’t want, you can wait here.”
“No, I will have coño too,” Silvino said, finally giving in. “We both will have this American puta.”
Angela smiled and sauntered into the blind canyon of brick. The wall at the back was whitewashed halfway up. Windows to the side were boarded over from the inside. The short, blind alley was filled with garbage and trash of every sort. She saw the desiccated carcasses of rats among the rubble. A truck tire without a rim sat to the side.
The men pointed at the dock.
“Disgusting,” she said. “I’m not going to lay down in this trash. You got someplace a little nicer and more private for a lady?”
“Yes,” Ronaldo said, nodding eagerly as he started up the wooden stairs at the side of the dock. He pointed at the metal door. “In there.”
Angela let them both usher her up the steps onto the dock and then through a dented metal door. Inside was an empty space with iron posts. Scraps of stained, ripply cardboard lay scattered about among bits of junk. She looked around in the dim light of a few high windows to make sure there weren’t men inside. She saw a stairwell far back in the right corner.
Satisfied that they were alone, she turned around. Both men were staring at her legs as they were unbuckling their belts. One of them had laid down a bed of cardboard scraps for her to lie on.
Angela pulled out her gun as they were staring at her legs.
“Up here, boys.”
When they looked up, she shot both men between the eyes—two quick pops. The bullets ricocheted around inside their skulls, scrambling their brains in a lethal instant. With no motor function, they dropped straight down. With everything from their motor cortex to the brain stem scrambled, their eyes remained open in death. They hadn’t even had time to close them.
Gun in one hand, Angela used her other hand to pick up the scraps of cardboard to cover the bodies in case anyone came down to check on them. She went back out the door and out the alcove to peek around the edge of the building. She saw Jack taking a stealthy look around the corner. Angela waved for him. He came at a trot.
“That was quick,” he said.
She gave him a look. “Did you expect me to fuck them first before I shot them?”
Angela hadn’t meant to snap at him, but she was already sinking down into a familiar, merciless mood she knew all too well. He seemed to recognize it, so he let it pass.
She pressed the lever at the bottom of the trigger surround to release the magazine. She’d already used three bullets. She put in a fresh magazine and put the partially empty one in her back right pocket where she wouldn’t use it unless needed. She wanted a full ten rounds when it started.
Jack followed her into the blind alley. “Tell me about the building, and where the men will likely be located.”